An Eerie Existence

This book has such a cool premise: the Alaskan town of Point Mettier is so remote (reachable only through a tunnel carved through a mountain) and the climate is so harsh that everyone lives in one apartment building. There's no downtown--the store and everything else is in the same building. The school. The police. Everything. The military base next door is abandoned, so even that stands as only a ghostly memory of more lively times past. Well, there's a murder, and whaddya know? A storm blocks the tunnel. So an Anchorage detective, Cara, ends up stuck there, trying to piece together the fragments of the puzzle, while finding out what the back stories are of the people she's investigating. There's plenty of fodder there, held captive by years of habit, lore and fear. And maybe Cara has a secret or two of her own . . . A great read. There were two metaphysical references in the book that didn't ever seem to get addressed, but maybe the author is leaving things open for a sequel. I'd read it!